Centre for Internet and Society

The Digital Oxygen for Odia Language

praskrishna — 2016-07-09T07:52:18Z

The article was published in My City Links on July 4, 2016.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/news/my-city-links-july-4-2016-digital-oxygen-for-odia-language

The Digital Divide: pros and cons of Modi's latest big initiative

praskrishna — 2015-07-06T02:11:56Z

Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the Digital India (DI) initiative on 1 July, at an event attended by scores of government officials as well as industry leaders.

The blog post by Suhas Munshi was published in Catch News on July 2, 2015. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

The initiative

Digital India aims to make all citizens digitally literate. Bring e-governance to every doorstep.

Corporates have promised to invest Rs 4.5 lakh crore in the initiative.

This is greater than the total spend on all govt schemes. It is equivalent to 1/4th of the national budget.

The positives

It will be a boost to industry; both large and small enterprises.

It will ostensibly create a lot of jobs.

It's ideal if citizens can connect directly with the government.

The negatives

Will the initiative be genuinely inclusive?

How will corporates recover their costs? Will the promised investments end up as bad loans from banks?

Who will handle the personal data of so many citizens; will it be efficient?

Who will the vendors be?

Will the proposed digital lockers for official documentation be reliable?

Will the initiative give the govt a tool to conduct mass surveillance?

The alternative focus

Some experts feel the govt should concentrate on giving people access to basic necessities like water, power and sewage.

The backbone of the project, the National Optical Fibre Network, has already run into massive infrastructure issues.

The programme aims to make all citizens digitally literate and bring the internet and e-governance to all sections of the society.

Like Modi's past initiatives, this too has polarised opinion, in this case on the government's aggressive push for e-governance.

While some advise patience before arriving at a verdict, others think it isn't too early to begin celebrations.

Astronomical budget

Most of the funds for this initiative are expected to come from the private sector. The total investments promised by big corporates, according to Modi, is Rs 4.5 lakh crore.

That is an astonishing number - it is equivalent to a quarter of the country's budget.

If true, then the amount spent on this project will be way over the total money spent on all of the government's 66 central sponsored schemes.

However, India hasn't been able to deliver on the last big welfare scheme promised - the Food Security Act, two years after it was passed in Parliament.

Investments promised by corporates add up to Rs 4.5 lakh crore, which is one-fourth of India's total budget

This scheme, which is set to cost the country Rs 1.25 lakh crore, aims to provide subsidised food grains to two-thirds of the populace.

The immediate concern experts have expressed with the budget is the possible intervention of the private sector.

The big corporate houses that have promised these staggering investments, would also be looking to recover them.

"As I see it, effectively a new sector is being created for this initiative. While it is good, when the private sector comes in to support big government projects, we also have to examine what the recovery model for those investments are. Hopefully, more details about investments will be made available," said Subrata Das, Executive Director, Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability.

Boost to industry

The initiative has already received a massive thumbs up from the industry. Corporate leaders made a beeline to praise the initiative.

RIL chairman Mukesh Ambani said that with Digital India, the government has moved faster than industry. He added that Reliance Jio Infocomm will invest Rs 2,50,000 crore as part of the Digital India programme.

"Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has partnered with the government for projects like Passport Seva and income tax e-filing, as well as state-level projects," said Cyrus Mistry, chairman of Tata Group, at the event.

Azim Premji, Wipro chairman, was quoted as saying the initiative will democratise the nation and "break down the digital divide in India".

He added that the level of skills of India's people will have to be significantly improved in order to make full use of the new initiative.

Kumar Mangalam Birla, chairman of the Aditya Birla Group, said it would leverage its Idea Cellular network of 165 million subscribers across 3,50,000 towns and villages in India to provide mobile-based healthcare and education services, as well as weather forecasting advisories and 'mandi' prices to over one million farmers.

The company will also launch a mobile wallet and payment bank as well as invest over $2 billion in the next five years in various internet-based sectors.

There seems to be a consensus on the kind of platform DI will provide to small entrepreneurs and the massive job opportunities it will create.

"Who has not heard about their computer engineer friends trying to develop a product in their spare time? These small entrepreneurs will get a lot of help if they are brought to a common platform with big companies and if lack of resources don't impede their work. Besides, as government starts to spend, there will be a severe need for hardware technicians, network operators, data entry operators," said Manish Sabharwal, chairman, Teamlease.

Rajeev Chandrasekhar, independent lawmaker in the Rajya Sabha, says DI is not only essential for the idea of 'minimum government, maximum governance', it is a big boost for the Indian IT industry.

"It is absolutely essential for good governance that as many people as possible are put directly in touch with their government. One of the biggest achievements, I think, will be in connecting 700 million people, so far sequestered, with the rest of the country. This obviously helps small entrepreneurs with launching their startups and bringing in a healthy workforce into the folds of this scheme," he said.

Many sunrise sectors before have similarly promised job growth that has not materialised. It remains to be seen how much of this euphoria plays out in concrete terms.

Privacy concerns

Therefore, while there's been a lot of positive buzz, not everyone is sold on the initiative.

Concerns are being raised about the handling of personal data of so many citizens.

There is a question about the reliability of the digital lockers in which all citizens will have their official documentation, and the anxiety of the data falling into the wrong hands.

"Of course, the concern with respect to privacy is legitimate and urgent.

Since the data the government will collect will be very large in terms of volume and can be misused, the reliability of the government's systems will have to be quite high.

So let's wait to see the nuts and bolts of the programme," said Apar Gupta, a senior lawyer specialising in information technology.

According to Reetika Khera, associate professor, economics at IIT Delhi, applications like digital lockers will make it easier for government to conduct mass surveillance.

There are questions over the reliability of digital lockers and about data falling into the wrong hands

"Programmes like Aadhar, digi-locker, central monitoring system (of mobile calls) etc are creating and enabling a massive surveillance infrastructure in India that will put NSA's PRISM, XKeyScore etc to shame.

"For instance, if Aadhaar is linked to your mobile number, bank account, travel details, the government can build a profile of each person at the click of a mouse. This is especially worrying because data protection and privacy laws are weak or non-existent," she said.

Sunil Abraham, executive director of Bangalore-based research organisation Centre for Internet and Society, also agrees with the concerns but is optimistic about the safeguards being put in place.

"There is a very mature draft of the Privacy Bill at the Department of Personnel and Training which will hopefully be introduced into Parliament after some rounds of public consultation and feedback.

"This, along with appropriate architectural and technological changes to e-governance services, will mitigate privacy concerns," said Abraham.

Misplaced priorities?

Then there is an argument that the less-privileged sections of society may need basic social services before they're considered for internet inclusion.

"What is true at the ground is that many people still don't have access to basic services, so while I think this is a good initiative, it should be part of our medium-term strategy.

"To begin with, we should focus on setting up basic infrastructure and extending water, power and sewer lines to most of the country," said Amitabh Kundu, retired JNU professor, who's advising the government on various projects.

Apar Gupta wonders how the government intends to bring people who are semi-literate, with no access to internet, within the fold of this e-governance project.

"Extending social welfare schemes to this section of people solely through digital medium is not viable," he said.

Some feel that the whole DI initiative is a mass-scale feel-good exercise. The argument is that using technology to 'uplift' the masses isn't a new idea, and is introduced periodically, and turns out to be largely ineffective.

"From the looks of it, this initiative seems to be nothing but techno-optimism. There is a belief that new technologies will, by themselves, transform the social world, but this doesn't happen.

"Techno-optimism, which we have seen before, is no different to traditional forms of governance, and over time, turns out to be nothing but a public relations exercises. An exercise to make governance visible to masses," said Ravi Sundaram, professor at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS).

Infrastructure issues

A project of this ambition and magnitude is bound to run into difficulties and, just a day after the launch, The Indian Express reported that the National Optical Fibre Network, the backbone of the initiative, is way behind schedule.

The project was supposed to be completed by December 2016. Initially, the 2014-15 target was to execute the work for one lakh gram panchayats, which was later halved to 50,000.

However, up until March 2015, only about 20,000 gram panchayats have been covered.

The primary problem is the cascading delays faced by central agencies, and when the active intervention of states was sought, 'right of way' charges have become the bone of contention.

Lack of contractors to do specialised work is also turning out to be an issue.

Thus, it won't be a stretch to say that while the initiative sounds like a great thing, doubts over its proper execution will continue till there is some concrete success to show for it.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/catch-news-july-2-2015-the-digital-divide-pros-and-cons-of-modi-s-latest-big-initiative

The DigiLocker was supposed to cut down paperwork but less than 0.1% of Indians are using it

praskrishna — 2016-09-12T01:59:44Z

The official data shows that the platform has not enthused as many users as the government expected.

The blog post by Mayank Jain was published by Scroll.in on September 12, 2016. Sunil Abraham was quoted.

The government has been working hard to make all of India go digital – but its initiatives don't seem to be having the desired effect. Not yet anyway.

DigiLocker was launched in July last year as a secure platform for Indian citizens to store and access their documents on an electronic repository provided by the government of India. This is one of the major planks of the Digital India programme – which aims to take government services online and make the entire country digitally literate – but it does not seem to have enthused too many so far.

To popularise it further, the government on Wednesday integrated it with the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways to allow people to store a digital version of their driving licence and vehicle documents on the DigiLocker, sparing them the trouble of having to keep the hard copies on them at all times.

More than a year since its release, the platform has about 1.1 million people signed up as users, according to the official statistics on the DigiLocker website.

This might seem like an impressive number – but compare it to the country’s population of about 1.21 billion, or even its internet-using population of 350 million – and it becomes a drop in the ocean.

As this chart shows, only 0.09% of Indians are on DigiLocker – this is less than one user per 1,000 people in the country. DigiLocker is being used by 0.33% of the online population in the country, which implies that there are 33 users per 10,000 people on the internet from India.

Digital dreams

When it was launched by the Department of Electronics and Information Technology, the government had envisaged a cloud-based and secure storage platform that would cover the entire population, make it easier to procure and access important documents – including mark sheets, degrees and tax papers – and reduce paperwork as well as save time.

“In effect Digital Locker will touch every citizen's life by bringing in lot of convenience and therefore fulfilling the government's vision of a citizen centric governance model of providing services at the door-step of citizens,” the government said in a press release when the locker reached one lakh users in the first 100 days of its launch.

While the official website claims that the number of users is now about 2.1 million, the state-wise figures add up to only 1.1 million people on the platform.

Among the states, Maharashtra has most DigiLocker users in absolute numbers (more than 1 lakh), while Arunachal, Nagaland and Mizoram have less than 1,000 users each.

When the population of each state is taken into account, however, the picture changes. When adjusted for population, a mere 0.7% Sikkim’s population uses the service – and this is the highest percentage among Indian states. Maharashtra, with the highest number of DigiLocker users, has a much lower percentage of those on the service – 0.12%. The national capital, meanwhile, has just 0.17% of its population on the service.

Lock up

Citizens can use DigiLocker to store up to 10 megabytes of personal documents online.

Since the 10MB storage isn’t enticing enough, considering that internet users can avail themselves of at least 1GB of storage for free through private services such as Google Drive or Dropbox, the government is trying to push usage by integrating several departments with the service and allowing users to access more documents in real time from anywhere.

Among those enrolled so far include the road transport ministry, Maharashtra’s department of registry and stamps and educational bodies such as the Central Board of Secondary Education, which is now trying to release mark sheets and results of competitive exams online.

Though the government hoped that these initiatives would increase its usage, technical glitches have prevented several people from using the service.

A student who gave her National Engineering Entrance Exam this year spoke to Scroll.in about why she didn't sign up for DigiLocker even though her results were released on the platform.

“They allowed us to access results instantly on the platform but it required a sign up using the Aadhaar number,” a student, said on the condition of anonymity. “I tried signing up thrice using my phone number but never received the one-time password and then my Aadhaar verification didn’t go through so I could never sign up.”

The service is linked to the government's biometric-based Aadhaar identification system, but it is not mandatory to have an Aadhaar number, according to the website.

Privacy concerns

Another reason why people are hesitant to sign up for the service are privacy concerns about storing important and private documents on a central repository.

“Any large linked database with personal information is a serious threat to citizen’s data,” G Nagarjuna, a researcher at the Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education in Mumbai told Scroll.in earlier. “There exists no agency that could secure their data till date without any possibilities of data theft.”

Experts said storing private information, such as biometric and passport data, on the service could pose security and privacy concerns.

Sunil Abraham, Executive Director of the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society told Scroll.in over email that the project can have serious consequences if it is not encrypted well.

“Unless the cryptography and architecture is organised in such a manner that only the citizens will have access, there can be very serious consequences for the individual’s right to privacy,” he said.

Internal resistance

Those working for the project said the usage of the locker is going to go up if more government departments start issuing documents digitally to the locker, instead of handing over hard copies, as this will prompt users to sign up.

If the usage has to be increased, more departments need to come on board and start releasing documents digitally, said Debabrata Nayak, additional director of the National E-Governance Division, which implemented the project.

“It’s only when more departments start implementing digitisation and issuing digital documents that we will see a jump in the number of users because Digital Locker is pushed like that,” Nayak said, adding that National E-Governance Division is facing a fair bit of resistance from the departments.

“But not all departments are doing it yet because it requires a massive change in their work processes and we are trying to get them on board.”

Aadhaar woes

DigiLocker is designed as a push as well as pull service, which means that it should allow departments to issue as well as request documents from users. For this, users need to link their Aadhaar numbers to the locker. This is proving to be a problem, because most departments are not linking the documents they release to Aadhaar just yet, and not all users are registered with the unique identification system.

Moreover, the validity of Aadhaar is under question in the Supreme Court over privacy concerns voiced by the civil society.

An activist had moved the Supreme Court last year over the government making the Aadhaar number mandatory to sign up for DigiLocker. While the petition was quashed on procedural grounds, the government quickly moved to allow users to sign up without their Aadhaar numbers. However, the usability of the locker is restricted for such users.

Nayak said that non-Aadhaar-linked users can only upload their own documents on the system, without being able to use any other facility that DigiLocker claims to provide.

“Earlier Aadhaar was necessary but we changed it because people demanded access, but for most services, like getting government documents or requesting documents, it’s [Aadhaar] necessary,” he said. Nayak said this is because Aadhaar is the only way the government can identify the person who is being issued documents.

So what can one do without an Aadhaar on the DigiLocker?

“Without Aadhaar you can dump your garbage in it, which means you can upload your own files on the digital locker system,” Nayak said, “but why would you do that if you have Google Drive and Dropbox-like services?”

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/scroll.in-mayank-jain-september-12-2016-the-digilocker-was-supposed-to-cut-down-paperwork

The Data Revolution and education post-2015: Considering the promise and the risks

praskrishna — 2015-05-07T06:41:56Z

In August 2014, the secretary-general of the United Nations established the Independent Expert Advisory Group on a Data Revolution for Sustainable Development.

The blog post by Joshua Muskin was published in Brookings on March 31, 2015. Sumandro Chattapadhyay gave his inputs.

This group was charged with evaluating the global state of data and deriving recommendations that permit data to live up to their potential as “the lifeblood of decision-making and the raw material for accountability.” The resulting report, A World that Counts, posits that “Governments, companies, researchers and citizen groups are in a ferment of experimentation, innovation and adaptation to the new world of data, a world in which data are bigger, faster and more detailed than ever before.” This, they assert, “is the Data Revolution.”

Central to the group’s arguments is the assertion that data are and must be treated as a “public good.” Implicit is the notion that all data are good and that more data are “gooder.” Certainly there is much to laud and anticipate in the report’s definition of the Data Revolution and its recommendations. Perhaps most deserving of interest are the call for data that:

come “from other sources, such as qualitative data, citizen-generated data and perceptions data;”
are generated “from all parts of society;”
are “more detailed, timely and relevant;”
increase “usefulness...through a much greater degree of openness and transparency,” while “avoiding invasion of privacy and abuse of human rights;” and
lead to “more empowered people, better policies, better decisions and greater participation and accountability.”

come “from other sources, such as qualitative data, citizen-generated data and perceptions data;”are generated “from all parts of society;”are “more detailed, timely and relevant;”increase “usefulness...through a much greater degree of openness and transparency,” while “avoiding invasion of privacy and abuse of human rights;” andlead to “more empowered people, better policies, better decisions and greater participation and accountability.”

The blog entry by Joshua Muskin was published in Brookings on March 31, 2015. Sumandro Chattapadhyay was quoted.

What could go wrong?

Currently neck-deep in research on the use of student learning assessment data in education, I suggest that this implicit assumption and the promise of unwaveringly positive outcomes are not guaranteed. As we experience the emerging revolution, there is every reason to embrace this promise and to take up arms to ensure its fulfillment. But, as history shows, many a revolution has derailed, claiming the benefits of the rhetoric for a few while leaving many victims. While working towards the noble and indeed crucial aims laid out in the report, vigilance will be vital—as will very strategic action to ensure that the revolution does not veer away from its vision.

It is hardly the aim of this seemingly premature appeal to vigilance to unseat completely the objectives and recommendations of the Expert Advisory Group. (Indeed, the Data Revolution has barely launched, though its roots are already solidly planted, as evident in education in the surge of countries involved in international and national testing. See, for example, Benavot and Tanner, 2007.) Rather, in the spirit of Charles Tilly’s 1963 “Analysis of Counter-Revolution,” my goal is to remind all those ready to enlist in the revolution that this initiative does not necessarily “unite the people.” Regardless the document’s comprehensive and progressive appearance, there are many who take different positions, with some fearing what a reign of big data, irrespective of its origins and nature, will yield once it moves to implementation in its myriad forms and locations. While the document features the poor as a main beneficiary of the revolution, Neva Frecheville (2014), among others, notes the absence of low-income country representatives on the panel. Arguably more significantly, the emergence of citizen-led assessments in education may be perceived as a sort of reaction against the hegemony of centrally managed data regimes, taking control of the data by the local poor to ensure that its use fully serves this population. While the report embraces such initiatives, it would seem important to secure their independence, alert to the risk of a usurpation and hijacking of the mission, the program and the resulting information.

Sumandro Chattapadhyay, research director at the Centre for Internet and Society in New Delhi, has pointed in “An Open Data Agenda for post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals” to a few likely opportunities for the revolution to go awry once operating. For one, the modern technology thrust obvious in the report does not translate automatically into heightened generation, retrieval, or understanding of information for the world’s poor majority. Quite simply, this group does not have automatic access to either the modern modes of communication or the institutions by which the agents of the revolution will transmit the results. Two, come the revolution, there is on the one hand no obvious guarantee that data will supplant politics in policy and decision-making. Yet on the other, big data may provide an even bigger and potentially obfuscating weapon in the hands of politicians’ and other leaders, whether public or not. As one learns in Statistics 101, the same numbers can justify very different conclusions; and those who control the data usually control the story: information is power. Three, the push for standards and comparability in data risk negating or at least undervaluing the validity of non-standard idiosyncratic data and other information that may emerge at the local level and still have great worth; and sometimes be more meaningful, even if not “scientific.” Finally, Chattapadhyay asks “Who is empowered by using (opened up) data?,” warning that the “falling costs of collection and archiv[ing] of data... create strong attractions towards gathering as much data as possible without specific objectives for their collection.” Furthermore, the “...availability of data at a global scale has massive commercial value, [the] unlocking of which may [also] not necessarily lead to positive impacts.” The threats of such an outcome to privacy should be obvious and are widely documented (see, for example, this post from the MIT Big Data Initiative). The fact that in education we are dealing with children raises the danger of this prospect even higher (see, for example, the U.S. Student Data Privacy Act).

What does this mean for the education sector?

In a world where data are “bigger, faster and more detailed than ever,” what are the opportunities and vulnerabilities for the local actors to whom Chattapadhyay refers; in education, these comprise teachers, other “front-line” educators, and parents. This line of inquiry was also central to the analysis undertaken by the Learning Metrics Task Force Learning Champions at their February meeting in Kigali—the topic of a recent blog of mine.

There are many claims of data as a positive asset in education, and these are often matched by actual experience in many settings. Prominent are the impact of information on policy; on the allocation of resources (financial, material and human); on the validation, revision or termination of a particular strategy or initiative; and ultimately on strengthening quality and equity. At the school and classroom level, formative assessment (with feedback) is regarded by many—e.g., see Hattie (2011); Barber & Rivzi (2013), p.65; and Black & William, in Lucas, Claxton & Spencer (2009), p. 3—as the most robust factor in learning. It is a problem, though, that there is little evidence that system-level assessments have real “meaning for...teachers” (Long, Dunne & Mokoena, pg. 158) and that formative assessment is usually either poorly done or not at all (see Shiohata, 2015).

Three fears concerning the Data Revolution come quickly to mind, adding to those mentioned above like the privacy issue. One is that data on what is easily measurable in learning will overwhelm other aspects of information on education that are equally (or even more) essential, but are not easily measured, particularly in the classroom. Conversely, there is a strong risk of eschewing measures that can be both more accurate and more nuanced in the classroom, and therefore more useful in guiding learning. An example might be the assessment of personal competencies, such as creativity, curiosity, confidence, and collaboration. While possible to do, the methodological challenges of devising valid, standardized, and comparable assessment instruments for these are prodigious, particularly across cultures, and any measures would likely be difficult to interpret into pedagogic strategies. In contrast, a school-level inquiry by teachers into the characteristics, observation, and cultivation of these same traits can be very precise, strategic, and effective, especially when facilitated as captured in the OECD background paper by Lucas, Claxton and Spencer.

The third fear is that data will influence policy, planning, and practice to a degree that exceeds the reliability of the numbers and the “external validity” (see Rodrik) of their analysis—sometimes considerably. Such would be the case, as Rodrik explains, when applying the subject of a favorable randomized controlled trial from one setting to another. Related to this, an outsized faith in statistics or a reliance on overly sophisticated analyses—lured to the shoals by the siren song of what is possible—may simply undermine basic common sense; for example, can we not sometimes rely on a teacher to identify which students are struggling and need further help without imposing frequent, narrowly defined tests? (I am reminded of a pun shared by my Swiss friend, Pierre Jaccard, who reformulates the French phrase “panne d’essence”—a breakdown due to running out of gas—to indicate the all-too-frequent occurrence in policy circles of a “panne de sens,” or running out of common sense.)

Where I perceive “red flags” to arise and start flapping most frenetically around data regards its use. In particular, both the U.N. document and much of the discussion around student learning assessment highlight the value of data for central decision-making and policymaking: As stated in A World That Counts, “Without high-quality data providing the right information on the right things at the right time, designing, monitoring and evaluating effective policies becomes almost impossible.” The report hardly ignores local level actors and institutions—in education, the classroom, the school and parents—but this level is definitely under-represented and vaguer in terms of approach. But here is where the greatest clarity and strategic precision is required.

What the Data Revolution risks overlooking most are those education actors who are furthest from policy (even excellent policy), but upon whom positive outcomes ultimately depend. These are teachers, other educators, parents, and students. Even though the Advisory Group claims to speak on their behalf and to embrace them as part of the movement, are they really co-revolutionaries? While the citizen-led assessments clearly are eager to engage with the authorities, does their legitimacy and influence derive from their being fully within the system or, as I suggest above, does it exist because of their status as an honorable and powerful counter-balance? As politicians and policy leaders demand ever more and ever more sophisticated data, and as technology makes the collection, analysis, and dissemination of these data more elaborate and extensive, how great is the risk of overwhelming the capacity of classroom teachers, other local educators, parents, and other local institutions to absorb, let alone make sense of, the information and to use it appropriately and effectively? Are we running in the opposite direction of a solution to the oft-repeated issue of low-capacity with data, especially in the developing world? What does the Data Revolution furnish truly and directly to these critical actors in terms of information, resources, capacity, and authority to make decisions that improve teaching and learning for better education and to foster broader sustainable development outcomes?

The Data Revolution surely has much of vital importance to offer in gathering, organizing, and analyzing the vast array of information that relate to education and learning. As indicated above, the aim here is not to assail the expanded definition of data and their use per se. It is, however, an exhortation to gather, analyze, disseminate and use data on learning to inform decisions and actions that link directly to real education circumstances, challenges, and goals. The language of the Expert Group report claims this as its objective. The admonition addresses the need to be sure that this crucial dimension not get lost or overwhelmed in practice. So, as we hail the intent and elements of the Data Revolution and endeavor actively to attain its full promise, it will be vital to remain keenly vigilant and, if necessary, not to hesitate in summoning a counter-revolution in order to defend fully the ultimate goals: appropriate data in the service of all, including most critically the most marginalized of the world.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/news/data-revolution-and-education-post-2015

The Dangers Of Birdsong

praskrishna — 2014-02-12T10:29:10Z

Instant gratification? Social media can quickly turn the game into checkmate if you don’t keep your emotions in check.

Namrata Joshi's article was published in Outlook on January 25, 2014. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

“Woke up from a dream in which I had just learned that I was going to keep wickets for India. In my dream, I thought, let me share this news on Twitter. I didn’t, fearing I would be made a laughing stock.” These are few of a series of stream of consciousness tweets about a dream posted this Monday by author-academician Amitava Kumar. Tweets that don’t just have to do with dreaming of a personal achievement, but also about tweeting it. “Twitter has invaded even our sleeping life,” says Amitava on an e-mail but also admits that he didn’t think for a moment that he was sharing something private in a public place while tweeting his reverie. “Instead, perhaps, I was seeking a private connection with a lot of readers.” Which he did rustle up in good measure. He followed it up by tweeting a picture of his son with him, taken by his 10-year-old daughter Ila, as a homage to a similar photostream by author- photographer-art historian Teju Cole.

Amitava’s unfussy and creative candidness about tweeting things personal, which he prefers to see as “grappling with a form of writing” came in the wake of a weekend of vigorous debate on how social media platforms were bringing the private under unblinking public scrutiny—the immediate hook being the sudden, tragic death of Sunanda Pushkar after her no-holds-barred Twitter war with Pakistani journalist Mehr Tarar (over the latter’s alleged liaison with her husband Shashi Tharoor, which was consumed with much amusement by their vicarious, at times vicious, followers). The Tharoor incident is not a stand-alone case. Be it a confidentiality clause or diplomatic tact, a professional decision or personal affair or even a death of someone close to you, social media has become a stage to play out the classified and the confidential (see infographic) by the celebrities and the aam aadmi alike. The payback? Spats, comebacks, breakdowns, meltdowns, resignations, embarrassments, humiliations, kerfuffles....

And it’s not something confined to India alone. “US Congressman Anthony Weiner’s tweet of his, let’s call it, torso, to a young woman in Seattle is perhaps the most egregious example of a US politician behaving badly online,” says Amitava. No surprise then that Weiner became a butt of late-night comedy shows.

But the larger question here is why. Why this urge and urgency to share it all? What is it about a platform like Twitter or Facebook that makes people bare and dare? Is it that the immediacy, speed and reach allows them the easiest way to extend the boundaries of their secluded, lonely lives, get instant attention and fan the curiosity of someone out there who they don’t even know? And why is propriety and moderation getting thrown out of the window in the world of virtual exchanges? Adman-columnist Santosh Desai calls Twitter a “broadcast system to the universe”. The tweets are often “thought bubbles”, “something you mutter” without a full sense of what public means. “The spur of the moment opinion or feeling acquires public currency,” he says. “The unraveling of the human being, the opening up of the closed box then becomes a new source of stimulation and pleasure,” he says. “I sometimes wonder how we shared before Twitter. We talk about what we like, don’t like at the drop of a hat. At times you are vulnerable and vent things out without an agenda and without knowing the repercussions. We creative bunch are like that,” says popular actress Divya Dutta.

According to Sunil Abraham, executive director of the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, private information is a currency in the global attention economy. “One of the many ways of climbing the attention economy is to divulge private information. Those in public life like filmstars and socialites understand this completely and exploit all traditional broadcast channels and contemporary multicast channels like social media to amass public attention,” he says. Look closely and the online space is no different from the real. There are as many exceptions as there are rules. So for every exhibitionist handle that exploits our latent voyeurism, there is a Natasha Badhwar, one of the most life-affirming presences on Twitter. For her, like Amitava, sharing is a mode of expression. “Sharing gives us agency. We take back the power to tell our story, express our views, share our version in our own words,” she says. According to her, “honest” sharing fuels empathy. “It is contagious, it makes the reader want to share too,” she says. And from that sharing could emerge a new pool of acquaintances, friends and well-wishers. It may not be a virtual escape from the real but a journey and connect back to the actual, an expansion of the human circle than a depletion of it.

But not all our friends and followers need necessarily be sympathetic. Often they are also brutally savage. “The anonymity allows people to say exactly what they want without considering the implications. They don’t realise that it’s not just a handle but a human being they are talking to,” says Nikhil Pahwa, founder of medianama.com. Amitava compares it to drone warfare. “The technology of remote destruction has introduced a new experience of war, and a new logic of killing. You can kill with greater abandon; you can strike in unexpected places; you are confronted with few consequences of your fatal mistakes. Similarly, Twitter allows a mode of social exchange with less culpability. There are very few consequences for trolls, but disastrous ones for their victims,” he says.

But surely that doesn’t mean that you blur all the lines between the private and the public? How to exercise caution? How much to open up (or not) and how much of your core to keep to yourself? Life, after all, is too complex and fragile for blame games and finger-pointing at social media alone. It’s those using it who need to own up. “People need to take responsibility for what they say. It’s like someone telling me how he was abused for 15 minutes on the phone when he could have easily cut the call,” says Nikhil Pahwa. “It’s a modern form of communication which you have to embrace but there’s a line you must draw. For instance, my wife and I never interact on FB or Twitter. I keep the family to myself. Jokes are fine but I don’t abuse or use swear words,” says actor Ashwin Mushran. “There has to be a sense of decorum. I won’t put out what I gossip about with my friends. I have no strategy but am guarded by my own belief system,” says actor Rajat Kapoor.

“It’s normal human nature to express. Be it anger or frustration, as a counsellor I tell people to not suppress emotions but some moderation and etiquette need to apply in cyber space,” says Mukta Puntambekar deputy director of Pune-based Muktangan Rehabilitation Centre. “You have to accept that your followers and friends will have access to details about you. You have to exercise discretion in saving something of yourself for yourself. There are areas that need not be opened up for all,” says actor-comedian Vir Das, who recently posted an open letter on FB—‘Twitter Bad? Facebook Evil? or We Stupid?’—on the pointlessness of blaming social media for the Tharoor family tragedy. To extend the argument further, and add another layer to it, aren’t we also living in times when privacy itself is evolving, asks Rajesh Lalwani, CEO of blogworks and a self-confessed people-watcher. “My grandmother would not even eat in public. But we eat in restaurants, on the streets,” he says.

Privacy is also becoming an ambiguous, vague and complex entity. Getting tagged in a friend’s photo compromises your privacy without your involvement or participation. “The line between private and public has mostly dissolved because of the temporal persistence of digital traces in cyberspace, the global nature of the network and the ubiquitous and pervasive surveillance state,” says Abraham. “On Twitter and FB, things get circulated...what we put up, whether it’s a tweet, an update or a picture, is permanent unlike memory,” says Desai. The digital trail stays online. “We are leaving our digital footprints behind. What we post might be easy but the implications of it are complicated,” says writer, filmmaker and media observer Amit Khanna.

According to him, there is a gap between the progression of technology and society. “There are newer windows but our minds are not growing apace to handle the connected world in a mature way,” he says. So one needs to be additionally circumspect about what we do online, how much of us we put out there. The ‘creative minds’ don’t see it as cut and dried. Natasha thinks that sharing can make people vulnerable to ridicule. “Confronting and embracing that vulnerability is the only way forward. These are not real fears to cling to, these are fears to shed as we grow and realise the extent of our individual power.” Amitava says he has seen several careers destroyed because of a single tweet. But he’d hate to back down and be cautious. As he puts it, “You’ve got to push the envelope and experiment with expression. I hope that when my wrong moment comes, people will be forgiving.” Amen to that.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/outlook-namrata-joshi-january-25-2014-dangers-of-birdsong

The Dangers Of Aadhaar-Based Payments That No One Is Talking About

praskrishna — 2017-01-17T14:39:53Z

Less than three months ago, India’s banking sector was hit by a data breach which compromised 32 lakh debit cards and led to fraudulent transactions worth Rs 1.3 crore.

The article by Mayank Jain was published by Bloomberg on January 17, 2017. Sunil Abraham was quoted.

The incident started a debate around security of payment systems. But the debate had just about begun when the government’s demonetisation decision dragged attention away from it. Now as the dust settles and as the government starts to push newer means of digital payments, the focus is back on the security of systems being seen as an alternative to cash.

One such system is Aadhaar-based payments which could potentially allow citizens to pay anytime anywhere with the tap of a finger.

In theory, it sounds simple.

The Aadhaar-based payment system runs on the existing Aadhaar infrastructure through which a person’s biometrics are used to authenticate the user. Once authenticated, the user can transfer funds directly from one bank account to another without going through a mobile wallet or a card.

The payment system requires a smartphone, a working internet connection and a biometric authentication device with the merchant. The customer needn’t have a card or a phone as long as he or she has an Aadhaar-seeded bank account.

National Payments Corporation of India has developed this payments infrastructure over the existing Aadhaar-Enabled Payments System, the railroad on which the public distribution system has been functioning for years now.

Amitabh Kant, chief executive officer of the government policy think tank NITI Aayog said, earlier this month, that all cards and point-of-sale machines will become redundant in the country in the next two-and-a-half years as Aadhaar-based payments become popular.

A Double-Edged Sword

While payments authenticated by biometrics sound like a good idea in a country where less than one in three people actually own a smartphone, there are fears that integrating biometrics with digital payments could prove to be a security headache.

The first part of the problem is that Aadhaar, while effective, is not a fool-proof method of authentication and identification failures are not uncommon. Building a payment system atop the Aadhaar system will simply transfer some of these vulnerabilities.

The possibility of transaction failures due to a biometric mismatch are real, admitted a former high-ranking official from the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) who spoke to BloombergQuint on the condition of anonymity.

Officially, the false reject rate – rejection of a biometric when it’s actually correct – is set at a maximum of 2 percent for devices that get certified from the UIDAI. On the ground, however, failure rates vary widely, said the official quoted above.

According to the official statistics on UIDAI, more than 16 lakh Aadhaar-authentication requests failed in the past week. The type of errors encountered ranged from the biometric data not matching the database to demographic details not checking out.

The failure rates on Aadhaar Enabled Payment System for interbank transactions (which is a part of all Aadhaar authentication requests) were found to be as high as 60 percent by the Watal Committee on digital payments which published its report in December.

Additionally, newer security threats may also emerge if the scope of Aadhaar is widened. These include identity theft if a person’s biometrics are compromised from the payment system, phishing attempts, and the difficulty in revoking access once biometric information is compromised.

Biometrics aren’t an exact science, the official quoted above said, while adding that possible glitches have to be weighed against the benefits of offering a widely accessible non-cash mode of payment to citizens.

How Easy Is It To Beat The System?

Sunil Abraham, executive director of Bangalore based research organisation Center for Internet and Society (CIS) said that one way to assess how secure a system is to understand the cost and effort that goes into breaching it.

In the case of Aadhaar-based payment systems, the costs may not be high.

“There’s the gummy finger method which essentially requires some Fevicol or gum to duplicate someone’s fingerprint which can be enough to transact on someone’s behalf without them being there,” said Abraham in a phone conversation with BloombergQuint. “An average person can’t clone a smart card. Just fevicol and glue can help you make a gummy finger. The biometric lobby will say that advanced scanners defeat the gummy finger attack but more advanced scanners are also more expensive.”

Also, using more sensitive devices could push up the instance of false rejection of transactions, said Abraham.

There are other concerns. Like the fact that devices used for Aadhaar identification could store personal information, which, in turn, could be susceptible to a breach.

There are five main components in an Aadhaar app transaction – the customer, the vendor, the app, the back-end validation software, and the Aadhaar system itself. There are also two main external concerns – the security of the data at rest on the phone and the security of the data in transit. At all seven points, the customer’s data is vulnerable to attack.
Bhairav Acharya, Program Fellow, New America

Acharya, who works at a U.S.-based think tank called New America and focuses on cyber-law, said the key concern is that Aadhaar data can be stolen and misused.

“The app and validation software are insecure, the Aadhaar system itself is insecure, the network infrastructure is insecure, and the laws are inadequate.”

The biometric data collected on the authentication device at a merchant location can potentially be stored on the device as well as the smartphone of a merchant for a long time. Abraham added that there is a possibility that non-certified devices will enter the market, which can store data and use it in the future to do fraudulent transactions.

The concerns over potential misuse of biometric data by private agencies has also been highlighted by the Supreme Court of India. Earlier this month, the apex court refused to expedite the hearing on a petition regarding Aadhaar being utilised for multiple use cases by private companies. It, however, observed that private agencies collecting biometric data “is not a great idea”.

Deficient Privacy Laws

Apar Gupta, a Delhi-based lawyer working on cyber security, says that the lack of strong privacy protecting provisions is another concern that should be kept in mind while moving towards an Aadhaar-based payment system.

“The data stays for a long time with the stakeholders in the system. The requesting agency can keep it for seven years and the UIDAI can store it for five years. There are insufficient safeguards and there’s an absence of privacy law and an independent privacy regulator,” he said.

Acharya agreed.

India does not have the necessary laws to deal with a decentralised, biometrically-authenticated, mobile payments system, according to Acharya.

“Moreover, current laws and policies regarding the Aadhaar project, particularly the centralised database, are inadequate from the point of view of data security and end-user privacy,” he said.

Abraham of CIS said the issue is wider than Aadhaar. The problem is the lack of a strong data security law.

We only have a minimal data security law under the Section 43A of the Information and Technology Act which only applies to the private sector. There’s no law that applies to the government. Even 43A has not been applied consistently. There’s no place for you to go and complain if your identity has been compromised.
Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, Centre for Internet & Society

Gupta noted that, in the event of an identity threat, avenues of recourse are also limited. He said the best option is an appeal in the civil court, which is a long drawn out process.

In final analysis, according to Abraham, credit and debit cards are easier to secure as access can be revoked quickly.

“The trouble with biometrics is that the chain of trust is harder to establish because too many people can get access to biometrics and then you need to devise these convoluted solutions like hardware secure zones,” Abraham said.

“So the advantage of going with a smart card is that it can be easily re-secured, but with biometrics, once I compromise it, it’s lifelong.”

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/bloomberg-mayank-jain-january-17-2017-dangers-of-aadhaar-based-payments-that-no-one-is-talking-about

The Curious Case of the CCI: Competition Law and SEP Regulation in India

praskrishna — 2016-01-20T15:34:53Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/the-curious-case-of-the-cci-competition-law-and-sep-regulation-in-india

The Cultural Politics of Neo-Pentecostalism in India

praskrishna — 2013-08-21T11:04:26Z

Talk by Pradip Ninan Thomas

The Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore invites you to a talk by Pradip Ninan Thomas on The Cultural Politics of Neo-Pentecostalism in India. Harvey Cox, the scholar of religions, has described pentecostalism as ‘a religion made to travel’ and as the global face of Christianity today. While there is little hard data available in India on any changes in Christian denominational membership, there is evidence available via the Pew Study on Global Pentecostalism and any amount of soft data that indicates that there has been a massive expansion in new churches in India predominantly linked to the Pentecostalist and neo-Pentecostalist traditions.

This brief lecture is based on a study of Christian fundamentalism and Communications in India that Pradip Ninan Thomas had carried out in 2006. This lecture will explore the cultural politics of neo-Pentecostalism in India including its organizational strategies, ideological struggles, communicative practices and correspondences between the global and the local.

The religious marketplace in India has experienced extraordinary growth over the last two decades. Christianity too has been affected by this growth and Pradip Ninan Thomas argues that the commodification of Christianity is tied into Church planting, the numbers game and contestations with Hindutva in India.

Speaker

Pradip Thomas is Joint Director of the Centre for Communication & Social Change, University of Queensland, Brisbane. His research trajectory primarily comes out of the political economy of communication tradition and he has written/co-edited a number of books and papers on issues related to media ownership, intellectual property, religion and the media and communication and social change. A forthcoming book that will be published by Sage is entitled ‘Political Economy of Communications in India: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly’. He is currently in India carrying out interviews related to a book project on Communication Rights Movements in India. He has had a long standing research interest in issues related to religion and media, particularly religious fundamentalism and the media.

Time and Date

Wednesday, 24 February, 2010; 5.00 to 7.00 pm

Venue

Centre for Internet and Society, 2nd 'C' Cross, Domlur, 2nd Stage, Bangalore - 71

VIDEO

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/events/cultural-politics-neo-pentecostalism-india

The Crypto Wars Are Global

praskrishna — 2016-04-01T16:06:30Z

The blog post by Joseph Cox was published by Motherboard on March 4, 2016

American politicians, media, and the public may be focused on the ongoing battle between Apple and the FBI over encryption in the iPhone, but the so-called Crypto Wars are far from just a national issue.

The proliferation of encryption—and law enforcement’s efforts to defeat it—is a wordwide phenomenon, and one that might have much more urgent consequences outside of Europe and the US.

On top of that, some governments’ reactions to the increased use of cryptography have been more kinetic and drastic.

This was starkly demonstrated with the arrest of a senior Facebook executive in Brazil on Tuesday, seemingly carried out because WhatsApp was unable to fulfill a court order to intercept messages on the service. That case was likely an exceptional one, but it was symptomatic of growing frustration amongst governments and law enforcement around the world.

Plenty of countries already seemingly target devices to circumvent encryption

So as foreign authorities clamp down on crypto in their own way, how will this affect users?

“Outside the US, the consequences for users, the risks, the threats that they face; the reasons they use crypto, are going to be much more pronounced,” Amie Stepanovich, US Policy Manager at Access Now, a digital rights group told Motherboard in a phone call.

For some users, Stepanovich said, “encryption really is a matter of life or death.” She pointed to LGBQT communities in the Middle East or North Africa, where their sexual preference might be illegal.

Various countries have taken wildly different approaches to tackling crypto. Late last year, the Kazakhstan government announced a plan to force all internet users to download a digital certificate that would allow the authorities to snoop on encrypted traffic. And in 2014, the Russian government called for researchers to find a way to crack the Tor anonymity network. Both of those plans have seemingly failed to materialise in any concrete results, but the intention was certainly there.

Others have looked at attacking devices of individuals, something that the FBI is also keen to develop.

“The future might be in the hacking of the device, hacking the end-point,” said Richard Tynan, a technologist at activist group Privacy International.

Indeed, plenty of countries already seemingly target devices to circumvent encryption. Italian surveillance company Hacking Team had at least 70 customers from all over the world, according to hacked internal documents.

The legislative approach has also been fairly popular. In December, China passed a law requiring technology firms to assist in the decryption of information.

This legal route parallels the current battle between Apple and the FBI, where the agency has asked the company to write code that would override the iPhone’s security features. Some feel that if the FBI is successfully in making the technology giant write malicious code, then a precedent will be set for other countries to follow.

“I think that if the US government is successful in ordering Apple to write code, we're going to see other countries also try to push Apple in the same direction,” Stepanovich said. (In its recent amicus brief in the Apple case, Intel wrote that if the FBI is successful in its demands, other countries, particularly those with less protective privacy laws, might see an invitation to require companies to undermine the security of their products.)

J. Carlos Lara, research and policy director from Derechos Digitales in Chile, said “There are many reasons to be following the debate, even if it does not appear to be directly about us, or about our country, because it might become one of the issues in our country at any point in the future.”

Carolina Botero, director of Fundación Karisma, a Colombian civil society organization, told Motherboard that she could imagine a situation similar there to that ongoing in the US if Apple does lose this fight.

“Colombia has a real need to fight against terrorists; there is a real national security issue here,” she said.

Others remained sceptical, saying that some countries may follow their own path, as they've already been doing.

“U.S. commentators greatly over-estimate the positive impact of U.S. self-imposed restrictions in national security matters on how foreign countries will act,” Pranesh Prakash, policy director at the Centre for Internet and Society in India, told Motherboard in an email.

Although it’s not a case strictly dealing with the same issues as Apple and the FBI, Prakash pointed to when the Indian government pressured BlackBerry to install a server in the country, so messages could be more easily intercepted.

“Though the U.S. government does not put restrictions on the encryption that may be deployed by telecom networks and ISPs, the Indian government does. And we aren't even talking about an 'authoritarian' government here, but the world's largest democracy,” he wrote.

The encryption debate is clearly not one limited to only the US, or even Europe. Rather, the spread of cryptography, and how governments respond to that, is likely an immediately more important issue elsewhere in the world.

“The global threat is much more serious,” than in the US, Stepanovich said.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/motherboard-march-4-2016-joseph-cox-crypto-wars-are-global

The Critical Life of Information

praskrishna — 2014-05-05T04:41:08Z

Nishant Shah and Malavika Jayaram will be speaking at the event organized by Yale University on April 11, 2014.

The immensity of the proliferation of bits of raw information that is fundamental to current digital environments is at a scale that in earlier eras would have been characterized as sublime. Big Data also corresponds to scales of globalization with its heretofore unthinkable geographical expanses and inequalities, suddenly crystallized in local crises. Scholars have argued that the geographical scale of accumulation has been changing and that hierarchies of scale are appearing that reveal the specificity of capital at the present time. This, in turn, requires a re-scaling and re-conceptualization of life. The workshop will address how new notions of information as property, and its harvesting from people in contexts ranging from shopping to health care to social media, condition humanistic inquiry and its concepts of the individual and the collective.

Nishant Shah spoke in the panel on Big Data and Governance. Malavika Jayaram spoke in the panel on Big Data and the Arts. Click to read the original published on Yale University site.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/critical-life-of-information

the comic project

praskrishna — 2012-04-10T09:05:00Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/M5.jpg

The Changing Role of the Media in India: Constitutional Perspectives

praskrishna — 2014-02-04T06:05:31Z

The School of Law, Christ University is conducting National Conference on The Changing Role of the Media in India: Constitutional Perspectives from 28 February – 1 March 2014. Snehashish Ghosh will be moderating a session at this conference.

Christ University is one of India’s premier universities, offering a wide range of undergraduate, postgraduate and doctoral programmes. The School of Law was introduced in 2006 and is presently offering competitive law programmes, including the 5-Year integrated B.A., LL.B and B.B.A., LL.B (Hons.), as well as LL.M, M.Phil and Ph.D. The School of Law, is in pursuit of a dynamic environment that promotes holistic development of our students, through various co-curricular and extra-curricular activities. In this regard, it organizes a national conference every year. The theme for this year is ‘The Changing Role of the Media in India: Constitutional Perspectives’. The conference is planned to deliberate on the following sub-themes:

The Impact of the Press as the Fourth Estate on Constitution & Democracy
Independence of the Judiciary vis-a-vis Media Activism
Right to Information and the Freedom of the Press
Social Media and its Impact on Free Speech

For more info see the event details posted on Christ University website.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/changing-role-of-media-in-india-constitutional-perspectives

The Changing Landscape of ICT Governance and Practice - Convergence and Big Data

praskrishna — 2015-09-07T13:48:37Z

Sharat Chandra Ram was granted the Young Scholar Award 2015 to attend the Young Scholar Workshop (August 24 - 25, 2015) followed by main CPRSouth2015 conference (Communication Policy Research South) conference (26th - 28th August 2015) - "The Changing Landscape of ICT Governance and Practice - Convergence and Big Data" that was co-organized by the 'Innovation Center for Big Data and Digital Convergence, Yuan Ze University, Taiwan. The agenda for Young Scholar 2015 pre-conferernce workshop can be accessed here. The CPR South 2015: Conference Programme agenda can be accessed here.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/the-changing-landscape-of-ict-governance-and-practice-convergence-and-big-data

The Centre for Internet and Society - Bulletin - July '11

praskrishna — 2011-08-19T06:43:57Z

Greetings from the Centre for Internet and Society! In this issue we are pleased to present you the latest updates about our research, upcoming events, and news and media coverage. Subscribe to our newsletter and get monthly updates in your inbox and read it at your convenience. The newsletter issue of June 2011 can be accessed here! Click below to download previous issues.

Researchers@Work

RAW is a multidisciplinary research initiative. CIS believes that in order to understand the contemporary concerns in the field of Internet and society, it is necessary to produce local and contextual accounts of the interaction between the Internet and socio-cultural and geo-political structures. To build original research knowledge base, the RAW programme has been collaborating with different organisations and individuals to focus on its three year thematic of Histories of the Internets in India. Six monographs Rewiring Bodies, Archive and Access, Pornography and the Law, The Leap of Rhodes or, How India Dealt with the Last Mile Problem - An Inquiry into Technology and Governance, Transparency and Politics and Internet, Society and Space in Indian Cities are published online and will be launched later this year.

# New Blog Entry

CEPT to Set up Centre to Research Role of Internet in Social Development [Published in the Indian Express on June 18, 2011]

# Upcoming Event in CEPT, Ahmedabad

Locating Internets: Histories of the Internet(s) in India — Research Training and Curriculum Workshop: Call for Participation [Deadline for submission – 15 July 2011; Workshop from 19 to 22 August 2011]

* Digital Natives*

Digital Natives with a Cause? is a knowledge programme initiated by CIS and Hivos, Netherlands. It is a research inquiry that seeks to look at the changing landscape of social change and political participation and the role that young people play through digital and Internet technologies, in emerging information societies. Consolidating knowledge from Asia, Africa and Latin America, it builds a global network of knowledge partners who want to critically engage with the dominant discourse on youth, technology and social change, in order to look at the alternative practices and ideas in the Global South. It also aims at building new ecologies that amplify and augment the interventions and actions of the digitally young as they shape our futures.

# The Digital Natives Newsletter

The Digital Dinosaurs [Volume 5]

* Pathways*

HE Cell's initiative on social justice, in collaboration with CIS, has initiated the Pathways Project for Learning in Higher Education. It is supported by the Ford Foundation. Under this project, nine under-graduate colleges in different parts of India will be identified to provide special skills in livelihood, knowledge and technology to underprivileged students in those colleges.

# New Blog Entry

Pathways for Learning in Higher Education

Accessibility

Estimates of the percentage of the world's population that is disabled vary considerably. But what is certain is that if we count functional disability, then a large proportion of the world's population is disabled in one way or another. At CIS we work to ensure that the digital technologies, which empower disabled people and provide them with independence, are allowed to do so in practice and by the law. To this end, we support web accessibility guidelines, and change in copyright laws that currently disempower the persons with disabilities.

# New Blog Entries

Policy Spotlight: 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act [Written by Deepti Bharthur; contains an e-mail interview with Jenifer Simpson, Senior Director for Government Affairs and head of the Telecommunications & Technology Policy Initiative at the American Association of People with Disabilities ]
ICT Accessibility in Sri Lanka [Written by Nirmita Narasimhan]

Intellectual Property

CIS believes that access to knowledge and culture is essential as it promotes creativity and innovation and bridges the gaps between the developed and developing world positively. Hence, the campaigns for an international treaty on copyright exceptions for print-impaired, advocating against PUPFIP Bill, calls for the WIPO Broadcast Treaty to be restricted to broadcast, questioning the demonization of 'pirates', and supporting endeavours that explore and question the current copyright regime.

# Statement

Statement of CIS, India, on the WIPO Broadcast Treaty at the 22nd SCCR

# New Blog Entry

Putting a Lid on Royalty Outflows — How the RBI can Help Reduce your IP Costs [Written by Sanjana Govil]

Openness

CIS believes that innovation and creativity should be fostered through openness and collaboration and is committed towards promotion of open standards, open access, and free/libre/open source software.

# Submission

Comments on the draft National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy [submitted to the National Spatial Data Infrastructure]

# Comments

Comments on Draft National Policy on ICT in School Education

Internet Governance

Although there may not be one centralized authority that rules the Internet, the Internet does not just run by its own volition: for it to operate in a stable and reliable manner, there needs to be in place infrastructure, a functional domain name system, ways to curtail cyber crime across borders, etc. The Tunis Agenda of the second World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), paragraph 34 defined Internet governance as "the development and application by governments, the private sector and civil society, in their respective roles, of shared principles, norms, rules, decision-making procedures, and programmes that shape the evolution and use of the Internet."

# New Articles

The Present — and Future — Dangers of India's Draconian New Internet Regulations [By Anja Kovacs in the Caravan on June 1, 2011]
Big Brother is Watching You [By Sunil Abraham in Deccan Herald on June 1, 2011]
The Digital is Political [By Nishant Shah in Down to Earth, Issue of June 15, 2011]
Do You Want to be Watched? [By Sunil Abraham in Pragati on June 8, 2011]
Snooping Can Lead to Data Abuse [By Sunil Abraham in Mail Today on June 9, 2011]
Privacy and Security Can Co-exist [By Sunil Abraham in Mail Today on June 21, 2011]

Columns in Indian Express
Nishant Shah, Director-Research is writing a series of columns on Internet and Society issues:

Say 'Password' in Hindi [By Nishant Shah in the Indian Express, May 15, 2011]

# Upcoming Event

Socio-financial Online Networks: Globalizing Micro-Credit through Micro-transactional Networked Platforms – A Public Lecture by Radhika Gajalla [at the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, July 8, 2011]

CIS is doing a project, ‘Privacy in Asia’. It is funded by Privacy International (PI), UK and the International Development Research Centre, Canada and is being administered in collaboration with the Society and Action Group, Gurgaon. The two-year project commenced on 24 March 2010 and will be completed as agreed to by the stakeholders. It was set up with the objective of raising awareness, sparking civil action and promoting democratic dialogue around challenges and violations of privacy in India. In furtherance of these goals it aims to draft and promote over-arching privacy legislation in India by drawing upon legal and academic resources and consultations with the public.

# Featured Research

# New Articles

A Street View of Private and the Public [By Prashant Iyengar in Tehelka on June 4, 2011]
The new Right to Privacy Bill 2011 — A Blind Man's View of the Elephunt [By Prashant Iyengar in Privacy India website on June 8, 2011]

# New Blog Entry

Bloggers' Rights Subordinated to Rights of Expression: Cyber Law Expert

# Event Organised in Guwahati

Privacy matters [Donbosco Institute, Kharguli, Guwahati, June 23, 2011]
Privacy Matters - A Public Conference in Hyderabad [The English and Foreign Languages University (TBC), Hyderabad, June 18, 2011]

# Upcoming Events

Internet Surveillance Policy: “…the second time as farce?” – A Public Lecture by Caspar Bowden [TERI, Bangalore, June 27, 2011]
Privacy Matters - A Public Conference in Hyderabad [Osmania University Center for International Program, Hyderabad, July 9, 2011]

Telecom

The growth in telecommunications in India has been impressive. While the potential for growth and returns exist, a range of issues need to be addressed for this potential to be realized. One aspect is more extensive rural coverage and the second aspect is a countrywide access to broadband which is low at about eight million subscriptions. Both require effective and efficient use of networks and resources, including spectrum. It is imperative to resolve these issues in the common interest of users and service providers. CIS campaigns to facilitate this:

# Articles by Shyam Ponappa

Shyam Ponappa is a Distinguished Fellow at CIS. He writes regularly on Telecom issues in the Business Standard and these articles are mirrored on the CIS website as well.

NTP 2011 Objective: Broadband [published in the Business Standard on June 2, 2011]

* Miscellaneous *

# Technology, Transparency and Accountability: A Bar-Camp in Delhi [June 5, 2011, Delhi]

Communication Policy Advocacy, Technology, and Online Freedom of Expression: A Toolkit for Media Development [June 20 – July 1, 2011, Budapest, Hungary]

News & Media Coverage

Your cyber space is a hackers paradise [Mail Today, June 6, 2011]
Centaur website reveals guests' personal info [Times of India, June 20, 2011]
Mumbai Takes Note of Sexting, the Seamier Side of Texting [Times of India, June 19, 2011]
Look what the state just did to you [Mid Day, June 12, 2011]
Tough neighbourhood tests India's e-tolerance [Times of India, June 12, 2011]
India Weighing Looser Web Rules [Wall Street Journal, May 30, 2011]
Public data on the Web leaves much to be desired [Hindu, May 28, 2011]
What documents will you need, to get UID? [CitizenMatters.in, May 28, 2011]
Mobile education comes to villages [Mail Today, May 27, 2011]
Google now stalks your street [Hindu, May 27, 2011]
Women in love with Facebook [Deccan Herald, May 27, 2011]
Google Unveils Controversial Street View Mapping in B’lore [Economic Times, Mumbai, May 27, 2011]
NGOs say eG8 report must stress internet rights [TELECOMPAPER, May 26, 2011]

* Follow us Elsewhere*

Get short, timely messages from us on Twitter
Follow CIS on identi.ca
Join the CIS group on Facebook
Visit us at www.cis-india.org

CIS is grateful to Kusuma Trust which was founded by Anurag Dikshit and Soma Pujari, philanthropists of Indian origin, for its core funding and support for most of its projects.

The Centre for Internet and Society - Bulletin - January 2011

praskrishna — 2011-03-11T07:30:57Z

pdf

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/publications-automated/news-bulletin-january

Centre for Internet and Society

The Digital Oxygen for Odia Language

The Digital Divide: pros and cons of Modi's latest big initiative

The initiative

The positives

The negatives

The alternative focus

Astronomical budget

Investments promised by corporates add up to Rs 4.5 lakh crore, which is one-fourth of India's total budget

Boost to industry

Privacy concerns

There are questions over the reliability of digital lockers and about data falling into the wrong hands

Misplaced priorities?

Infrastructure issues

The DigiLocker was supposed to cut down paperwork but less than 0.1% of Indians are using it

Digital dreams

Lock up

Privacy concerns

Internal resistance

Aadhaar woes

The Data Revolution and education post-2015: Considering the promise and the risks

What could go wrong?

What does this mean for the education sector?

The Dangers Of Birdsong

The Dangers Of Aadhaar-Based Payments That No One Is Talking About

A Double-Edged Sword

How Easy Is It To Beat The System?

Deficient Privacy Laws

The Curious Case of the CCI: Competition Law and SEP Regulation in India

The Cultural Politics of Neo-Pentecostalism in India

Speaker

Time and Date

Venue

The Crypto Wars Are Global

Plenty of countries already seemingly target devices to circumvent encryption

The Critical Life of Information

the comic project

The Changing Role of the Media in India: Constitutional Perspectives

The Changing Landscape of ICT Governance and Practice - Convergence and Big Data

The Centre for Internet and Society - Bulletin - July '11

*Researchers@Work*

* Digital Natives*

* Pathways*

*Accessibility*

*Intellectual Property*

*Openness*

*Internet Governance*

*Telecom*

* Miscellaneous *

*News & Media Coverage*

* Follow us Elsewhere*

*Archives*

The Centre for Internet and Society - Bulletin - January 2011

Researchers@Work

Accessibility

Intellectual Property

Openness

Internet Governance

Telecom

News & Media Coverage

Archives